Minolta Minoltina AL-S

Five hundred and forty grams, with a coupled meter and a 40mm f/1.8 on the front. That is the weight the Minoltina AL-S manual gives, and in late 1964 it was a small number for a full-frame camera carrying that much. Minolta's own company history files it under November 1964 as the Minoltina-S and bills it as the most compact full-frame 35mm with a coupled meter in the world at the time. Pick one up straight after an AL and the claim stops sounding like advertising copy.

The name trips people up. The English manual calls it the Minoltina AL-S; Minolta's history says Minoltina-S, and the writer at cjo.info found both in use, one name in some markets and the other elsewhere. Under either badge it is the AL's smaller brother, and the numbers show by how much. The manual lists 128 x 74 x 60 mm. The cjo.info copy weighed 515 g against 765 g for his AL. That quarter kilo, and the compactness Minolta advertised, is the point of the camera. You pay for it in two places. The AL's 45mm f/2 becomes a 40mm f/1.8, which is hardly a penalty: a touch wider, a touch faster. The real cost is the top speed. The AL's Citizen shutter reaches 1/1000, and the Seiko SLV in this one stops at 1/500.

Metering is match-needle and cross-coupled. Turn the speed ring or the aperture ring and the needle moves with it; line it up and shoot. Film speeds are set from ASA 25 to 800. The lens doing the work is a six-element, four-group Rokkor-QF with an aperture scale from f/1.8 to f/16. It focuses down to 0.8 m (2.6 ft), close enough for a head-and-shoulders portrait across a cafe table, and it takes 40.5mm screw-in filters.

The shutter is the best reason to carry it. The Seiko SLV gives B and a full second through 1/500, with a self-timer built in, and it syncs both M bulbs and X electronic flash at every one of those speeds. Most focal-plane SLRs of 1964 synced electronic flash at 1/60 or slower. With this body you can set 1/500 on a bright afternoon, add a small flash, and lift the shadows on a face without stopping all the way down to hold back the sky. There is no mirror to slap either, so it is an easy camera to use around people who would rather not hear you working.

Its weak point is the very part that frees it from batteries. A selenium cell makes its own current from light, and decades of light wear it out. Plenty of surviving examples read slow, swing erratically, or have quit. Even a healthy cell is only rated for EV 6.7 to 17 at ASA 100, so a lamp-lit room at night was always beyond it. Check the needle against a known reading before you trust a roll to it. If yours has died, take an incident or reflected reading with the Zone Light Meter app and set the pair by hand; the rings are still right there and still easy to turn.

It is far less talked about than the Canonet. It suits someone who wants a fast normal lens in a jacket pocket and has no wish to depend on mercury batteries or adapters. Accept the 1/500 ceiling, test the cell before you pay, and you have a 1964 camera that still asks nothing of a battery shop.